My girlfriend and I are heading down to the Bahamas tomorrow afternoon for a vacation, so I thought it would be fitting if I took a look at the status of cryptocurrency in the Bahamas, because why not (I really like crypto).
For anyone that isn't too familiar, the Bahamas is a nation in the Caribbean that is made up of numerous islands. The capital is Nassau and is located on an island called New Providence. Tourism is approximately 50% of the nations GDP and half of the jobs that exist in the nation spur from that tourism.
From what I could find, cryptocurrency is more or less seen as a foreign asset that has little to no regulation on it. Bahamian citizens can invest using exchanges like EToro or Kraken and have access to about as many cryptos as American citizens (possibly more because the US has so many regulations).
A few months ago I did an interview with a man named U-Zyn Chua. He also happened to be a co-creator of the Bahamian CBDC called the Sand Dollar. This CBDC is much smaller than the overall supply of Bahamas Dollars, but during Covid it has become a viable style of payment for small businesses and merchants as they move towards contactless payments.
The Sand Dollar is the first of its kind to be deployed in the world and can be spent using an app that can be downloaded in the Bahamas. Digital payments serve a massive purpose in the Bahamas as islands are separated by miles of oceans and instant payments done via a phone are incredibly valuable.
Though there has been discussion in the past about how CBDC's are dangerous because of the fact that it is very much (directly) a centralized and governmental asset, a CBDC is also a first step into cryptocurrency/digital assets for many. It's a trade off, but it's getting people into a field they may not have found otherwise; I'm not sure how to feel.
I'll see what else I can find out while I'm there. Maybe some people I speak to will help me learn something about crypto as well!
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